"U.S. Sees Most Extreme July Climate, Oklahoma Sees Hottest Average Temperature of Any State on Record"

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The July Climate Extremes Index for the CONUS was 37 percent. This is the highest July value in the CEI record (since 1910). The culprits were, in order of impact: Extreme warm minimum temperatures(60 percent of the country, easily the largest on record), extreme wet PDSI (soaked northern plains & western great lakes), extreme warm maximum temperatures, and extreme dry PDSI (south-central U.S. through Gulf Coast). According to the Regional CEI, the South and Southeast had their 1st- and 2nd-most extreme July’s on record, respectively

As far back as 1995, analysis by the National Climatic Data Center showed that over the course of the 20th century, the United States had suffered a statistically significant increase in a variety of extreme weather events, the very ones you would expect from global warming, such as more — and more intense — precipitation. That analysis concluded the chances were only “5 to 10 percent” this increase was due to factors other than global warming, such as “natural climate variability.” And since 1995, the climate has gotten much more extreme.

In Oklahoma, the heat and drought were a punishing double whammy. In a vicious cycle, the dry soil intensified the heat and the heat dried out the soil. The result: heat unprecendented in any state at any time.

He directs us to The Oklahoma Climatological Survey, which reported this news:

Grover Cleveland was serving his second term as President in 1895. Victoria was
the Queen of England and Will Rogers was still a teenager. It is also the year
that statewide average temperature records begin for the United States. There
have been 1399 months pass by since 1895. Multiply that number by 48 and you
have 67,152 months of temperature records for the contiguous states. How hot
was it in Oklahoma last month? Of those statewide average temperature records
for the 48 states, none has been hotter than July 2011 in Oklahoma.

And so in a few decades, this will just be a typical July and eventually a relatively cool one for the state, assuming we keep following the deniers’ do-nothing strategy. In a terrific 2010 presentation, Climate scientist Katherine Hayhoe has a figure of what the future holds (derived from the 2009 NOAA-led impacts report):

Below are old comments from the earlier Facebook commenting system:

Off topic, but Margot Roosevelt of the LA Times just got canned. She was the best MSM reporter in the country on global warming related issues, and got it right just about every time.

You are just about the last person standing, Joe. I hope you do a piece on Margot, and show some other examples of journalist intimidation, too. The muting of even the words “global warming” in the media is borderline criminal.

Media company editors and publishers are little better than thugs now. We will have to depend on blogs like this one, and nontraditional outlets.

What this extreme weather shows is how formidable the cognitive dissonance is between what people are actually experiencing and their belief/values system. This is the frightening part, the simple intransigence and willingness to cling to a political/religious belief system to make sense of the world, even if that means trying to block out the facts like Rush Limbaugh.

Exactly how much worse does it have to get in these places? I suspect that a large number of people will cling to their denial of climate change even as their communities are destroyed.

The only hope I have is that hopefully most people are not like those in Texas or Oklahoma because if they are, then I am afraid you can put me firmly in Lovelock’s column as to the future of the human race.

Denying climate change not only denies the science of 2500+ professional scientists (multiple IPCC reviews, which are conservative) and many govt’s., it also delays doing anything to actually deal with the causes — human emissions of carbon pollution principally electricity production and transportation. If we (all humans) don’t start doing some serious carbon emission reductions soon, we are in deep doodoo.

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The temperatures this summer certainly look identical to the climate models of 2020 and beyond. An increasingly warmer climate everywhere. The heat in OK and the Texas Plains- which spreads into KA, most of western MO and western AR, which is an exact mirror of the 30s dust bowl & what climate models predict.

The longer we do nothing- the worst these conditions become- and spread throughout the entire Great Plans and Mississippi valley.

The nation has struggled for years to find an effective way to help communities rebuild homes, businesses and infrastructure after natural disasters. Now, in a collision between downward federal spending and an upward presence of catastrophes, Congress is moving to pre-fund disasters.

In Oklahoma, the heat and drought were a punishing double whammy. In a vicious cycle, the dry soil intensified the heat and the heat dried out the soil. The result: heat unprecendented in any state at any time.

Philip – As Chief Arborist at City of Dallas, how are Dallas’ trees holding up? If they’re sadly doing poorly as I suspect, how would you order these possible culprits: Heat, drought, local ozone, global ozone, inability because of above to fight off diease, inability because of above to fight off pests, inability of above to withstand wind damage (that could come in the months or years ahead)?

Can they recover, or do you feel the health of many of Dallas’ trees will be impaired and their lifespans shortened permanently?

And how is the understanding and acceptance of global warming in your department and the city, if you’re in a position to share?